


and they shall be one flesh

by Bushwah



Series: we the clay [15]
Category: Fake AH Crew (Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter)
Genre: Abusive Marriage, Alternate Universe - Cults, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Begging, Blood Kink, Blood and Gore, Bloodplay, Death Threats, Dehumanization, Derealization, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eye Gouging, Gangs, Gaslighting, Hazing, Heavy BDSM, Humiliation, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Kidnapping, Knifeplay, M/M, Marking, Marriage, Medical Procedures, Meet the Family, Misplaced Trust, Mutilation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Bondage, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Painplay, Pet Names, Psychological Horror, Scarification, Temporary Character Death, Torture, Tortured to Death, Victim Blaming, a nightmare (or is it), abusive found family, achievement hunter logo, conservation of detail, fear kink, high protocol leather top jack pattillo, impossible orders, minimization, murderginity, non-consensual immortality, sexy torture, tic-tac-toe, villain monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24448918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bushwah/pseuds/Bushwah
Summary: Jack marries Ryan and Jeremy.
Relationships: Jeremy Dooley/Jack Pattillo, Jeremy Dooley/Ryan Haywood, Ryan Haywood/Geoff Ramsey, Ryan Haywood/Jack Pattillo
Series: we the clay [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643119
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	and they shall be one flesh

**Author's Note:**

> This is an FPF fic based exclusively on the Fake AH Crew lore as set forth by Rooster Teeth Productions. This work owes an additional debt of thanks to Wren wrenseroticlibrary.tumblr.com and their collab partner Threatie alastair-made-me-undo-it.tumblr.com, posting collaboratively as Wrespawn on the AO3, for their contributions to the FAHC fandom.
> 
> All major characters in this series are abusive, in that they use abuse tactics in conducting their relationships. However, the degree of trauma they inflict depends on a variety of factors, within and outside their control. Abusive acts committed from a position of extreme power, such as Jack's control over the respawn machine (regarding the crew) or the other Fakes' access to it (regarding outsiders), are both particularly damaging and particularly unjustifiable.
> 
> This fic may contain inaccurate text descriptions of the Achievement Hunter logo.

“So you're the one Ryan's been talking about.”

Jeremy smiles easily. “I'm not that interesting, really.”

Ryan speaks up from behind him. “I want to sponsor him for immediate membership.” Ryan's words are quiet, but quick and precise. “I think if we don't act fast—”

“Sure,” Wheels says.

“—he's not going to... wait, what?”

“It's been good to see you so passionate about something,” Wheels says. “As far as I'm concerned, he's in. I expect you'll want to do the honors?”

Ryan squeezes Jeremy's shoulder like he wants to fuck him _again_. “Of course, Jack.”

“Careful, Vagabond,” the Kingpin interjects gleefully. “Remember, codenames only—”

“That doesn't apply,” Jack says, cutting him off. “Jeremy's one of us.”

A hot glow of pride blooms in Jeremy's chest, but on a more practical level he's still stuck on _do the honors_. “I take it there's some sort of initiation—”

“Want to tell him?” Jack says, looking past him to Ryan. Jeremy turns to look at Ryan, who seems to be an odd mixture of horny and contemplative.

“Nah,” Ryan says. “More fun that way.”

Jack claps her hands. “All right then! You two have a good time, and Ryan, be sure to text me when you're ready to do that part.”

“I was thinking we'd do that first, actually,” Ryan says.

“Mm. Take him upstairs; I'll bring the equipment.”

“Gladly.”

* * *

So that's how Jeremy ends up shackled, shirtless, to a metal chair that seems actually welded to the floor in a room festooned with instruments of torture.

He didn't get a good look around before Ryan pushed him down into the chair and ordered him to hold still, and the light in front of him burned a purple hole in his vision before he learned to keep his eyes off it.

Jeremy Dooley, folks; lost a staring contest with a lamp.

That means he doesn't know exactly what is and isn't in the room. But, fuck; he's tied to a chair, there's a light shining in his eyes, he caught a glimpse of a number of pointy things, and Ryan is _excited_.

Ryan hasn't been excited like this since the time they went out hunting.

Ryan is pacing the room, his footsteps not quite silent. The floor is dark-colored, but Jeremy doesn't think it's wood. Tile, maybe. It gleams in the light that Jeremy's not looking at.

“Do you know why you're here?” Ryan asks. Despite the theater of everything that's happening, his tone is casual.

“Not precisely,” Jeremy says. His gut turns uneasily, warning him of danger, as if he hasn't been plunging headfirst into danger this entire time. Danger is his middle name. Jeremy Danger Dooley. His gut can go fuck itself. “Wheels wanted me here, and I'm going to be a member, so I'm assuming this is the induction ceremony. What's it gonna be, a tattoo?”

“Something like that.” Ryan comes up on his left side, holding a knife, and Jeremy flinches before he can stop himself. It's different here somehow than it was in his bed. “Mm, you look good.”

“Don't I know it.”

“Wouldn't want to start the party before Wheels gets here, though,” Ryan muses. “I guess you'll just have to wait.”

Jeremy closes his eyes. He hears Ryan laughing, in front of him and to his right, and then more pacing. It's easier to track where Ryan is when he's not trying to look, but the back of his neck still prickles when the Vagabond passes behind him.

* * *

“Do you want him asleep for it?” Wheels asks.

“Nah,” the Vagabond answers without looking at Jeremy. “He can handle it.”

He's not wrong, but... _fuck_.

The Vagabond lurks vaguely to his left while Wheels runs cable from the power outlet under the light to the thing she set just behind him when she first came in. He tries not to look as she lifts it.

“Head up,” she says, “lean—yes.” She's in front of him, between him and the light. He opens his eyes all the way for the first time since he sat down here. She has one hand on the arm of the chair. The other is holding the device, which hums softly, evidently active.

Logically, he understands that this will probably hurt quite a bit more, but emotionally, he's just glad to have the light out of his eyes.

He jolts when it touches him. It doesn't hurt, though. She chuckles. “Relax. I'll tell you before I do it.” She rests her knee on the chair between his legs to free up her other hand to touch his neck, searching for something. She nods when she finds it and rests the device against that point.

“Three, two, one—” and then it hurts.

Jeremy does his best to stay still for it. He tenses a little, though; can't help it. It hurts more when he does.

“And that's that!” Wheels says, straightening. Jeremy's eyes flicker shut, too late not to get another eyeful of the accursed light. “He's all yours, Vagabond. I trust you'll take good care of him?”

“Of course.”

Wheels packs back up the equipment and leaves, humming under her breath. The tune is familiar, but Jeremy can't place it.

“So was that all?” Jeremy asks Ryan after she's gone. He's pretty sure it wasn't, but maybe...

“No,” Ryan says, confirming his guess. “There's still another part. This one is different for everyone. It's an art, not a science. Jack did it for me, and she's assigned me to do it for you.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, you'll find out. If I decide to go along.”

Ryan is so close behind him that Jeremy can feel his breath on the back of his neck. “If you...”

“Well, surely you didn't think you were going to _survive_ this partnership.” Ryan pinches his inner thigh mockingly. Jeremy's eyes open, and he recoils from the sight of the knife, held carelessly in front of his face. _You could put out an eye with that thing,_ he hears his mother say, overlapping with Ryan's words: “You walked into this with your eyes open. You knew who I was, Jeremy.”

“You don't want to kill me, though.”

“What are the odds I'm going to kill you today, while I'm marking you as _mine_? Three percent? Five percent?” Ryan runs the flat of the blade along his arm. It leaves goosebumps in its wake. “What are the odds that I'm going to kill you _eventually_?”

“You won't kill me,” Jeremy insists. “You got Mogar to stop you before I was even a Fake. I'm one of you now. You said—”

“And given that,” Ryan continues, speaking over him, “what are the odds that I decided to choose my time and place, and all this was just a pretext to get you here, alone, with me?” The knife bites into Jeremy's chest just below the collarbone like a lover's nip, a promise of more to come. Jeremy flinches violently, and it opens a gash nearly to under his arm.

Ryan tsks. “Careful, sweetheart. You're only hurting yourself, you know.”

“B-but then,” Jeremy's head is spinning. He wants to get up and fight, but the shackles attached to the chair are strong, and there's rope woven through them, binding him closer in place. His throat is dry. He swallows. “Then why would Wheels have...”

“Oh, Wheels doesn't know any of this,” Ryan murmurs into his ear. “Wheels doesn't need to know. What's she going to do if I make you disappear?” He laughs, and Jeremy jumps. “Kill me?”

“You don't scare me,” Jeremy lies.

“I should.” Ryan flicks the knife across his chest, drawing a dotted circle. “Mogar's not here to stop me. No one outside this room can hear you scream, and I think you know that you're not going to change my mind if I've decided you die here.”

Jeremy grits his teeth. It hurts, but like fuck is he going to _say_ that. “You aren't going to kill me.”

“See, you say that now,” Ryan says, etching a wavy line down his arm, “but I wonder if you'll keep saying it if I open an artery and stay for your last words? What does it take to convince you I'm serious?”

“You won't.”

Suddenly the knife is at his neck. Ryan's smile is hungry.

“Say it again.”

Jeremy doesn't dare swallow. The Vagabond's knife is absolutely steady. Jeremy can feel his pulse jumping under it, not quite enough to open the skin. His mouth is watering, as if knowing it shouldn't is all it needed. He doesn't move. He doesn't speak. He doesn't breathe. A thin trail of drool escapes his lips.

“Good boy,” the Vagabond says, and removes the knife. Jeremy swallows and coughs, shaking. “So you _can_ learn. I was beginning to wonder.” He places the knife on Jeremy's cheek just below the eye. Jeremy freezes. “Don't blink,” the Vagabond purrs. Jeremy stares helplessly into his eyes.

* * *

There are so many places Ryan wants to mark him.

He scores a careful line under Jeremy's eye, not deep enough to injure the organ. Blood wells up in the cut, and Ryan swipes his finger after the knife. Jeremy _does_ blink at that, a mistake, and Ryan lets himself smile.

Jeremy cowers back against the chair, defiance forgotten. “I—I didn't...” He trails off, a mute plea in his beseeching eyes. Ryan licks his finger languorously.

“...I'll overlook it,” Ryan says at last. “I want you to _see_.”

It's always seemed like a waste to him to put out a target's eyes.

He's already taken Jeremy's courage, reducing a once-brave man to cowering in terror. He wants to take more. He wants to take _everything_.

He steps back to take in the scene. Jeremy is staring fixedly at a point somewhere over his shoulder. The wound under his eye bleeds freely, dripping down to his chest. As Ryan watches, another drop falls from his chin.

That's right, he was drawing the insignia on him.

He places the knife inside the dotted circle he'd made earlier and starts to cut.

The five-pointed star is _deeper_ than the circle.

The keyhole has to wait because Ryan realizes that Jeremy's other arm is actually _unmarked_. On the virgin skin he writes _V_ for Vagabond. Lower on the arm, he draws two lines, and two lines perpendicular, and gets one X in before he tires of playing.

The keyhole is a _stab_.

* * *

Jeremy wakes up clutching his chest.

He's alive. The Vagabond torturing him to death must have been a dream, although it had felt terrifyingly real. But he's not in his bed.

He opens his eyes, squinting at the light, and can't make sense of what he sees. He reaches forward, tentatively, and feels empty air; whatever's above him isn't as close as it looks. Carefully, his hand guarding his head, he sits up. His hand contacts something hard and smooth above him, but the ceiling, or whatever it is, is high enough that it's not an issue.

Now that he's upright, he can see that he's inside a box with a padded bottom. The box is open, and he climbs out of it. He's nude, but if the Fakes wanted him to wear clothes, they should have given him clothes.

Wheels is there, scrolling her phone. She looks up when Jeremy emerges. “Oh, hello there, Jeremy!” she says. “Had a good time with Ryan?”

Jeremy... doesn't remember. Ryan had invited him over to meet the family, and then... something, and then he'd been waking up from a nightmare in an unfamiliar bed. “Where _is_ Ryan?”

“Upstairs,” Wheels says. “In the torture chamber, with your corpse.”

“With my...” Jeremy's memories rearrange themselves, and rearrange themselves again. “ _What_?”

“You died,” Wheels explains. “Ryan killed you. He wanted to be your first.”

Jeremy looks down at himself reflexively. Yep, he's still there. “I'm—I'm alive, though?”

“You've never heard the rumors about the Fakes?”

 _Which ones_ , Jeremy almost says, but he has. “Fuck.”

“You can still feel pain,” she says, “as I'm sure you learned, but lethal wounds won't kill you. They'll just send you back here.”

On the chair next to her is plain clothing: underwear, a T-shirt, pants. Jeremy puts on the shirt. The motions are familiar, but there's something unsettling about the very normality of the situation. Is he still asleep? The feeling of the shirt settling on his back argues otherwise.

He needs to talk to Ryan. Ryan will know what's going on. “Where's Ryan?” he asks, pulling on the pants. Shit, no, he already asked that.

But Wheels answers. “You want me to take you up to him?”

Jeremy nods and squares his shoulders. “Yeah.”

* * *

Jack escorts him through the base. Jeremy tries to track the path they follow, but is only fairly sure he could get back to the room he woke up in. The room he was allegedly reincarnated in.

He doesn't believe it yet. Not really. Jack had put something in his body. Probably she drugged him. Probably Ryan killing him was a hallucination.

He's waiting on the corpse.

They find Ryan in a room that Jeremy recognizes from when he was going through the base the first time. He's pretty sure Ryan actually bound him to the chair, at least, and the innocuous-looking door at the other end of this room might be the door to the room that... whatever it was that happened had happened in.

He palms at his chest, trying to find where the cuts were, but from his body, at least, there's no sign that anything happened at all.

Ryan is humming and washing a dish in the sink along one wall. Jeremy blinks. There's something odd about that setup. It hadn't registered earlier, when Ryan was leading him quiet and intent up to the place where it had happened, but now... What's this room _for_?

Ryan looks up as the two of them approach. “Good to see you, Jeremy!” He pauses. “Alive.”

So Ryan's in on it too. Jeremy wracks his brain. When did it become not real? Was any of it real? Was all of it real? Is _this_ real?

“Yes, this is real,” Jack says next to him, and Jeremy jumps. “Vagabond, you want to take it from here?”

Ryan wipes the knife on a towel next to the sink fastidiously to dry it and sets it down, open, further out on the counter. “Sure thing. How much does he know?”

“I told him, but I'm not sure he believes me. You might have to kill him again.”

Jeremy shivers. They're discussing his death so casually, like he's not even there. It's sort of hot, but he needs answers. He needs to _know_.

“Ryan?” he says, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “Can I, uh. Can I see...”

“What I did to you? Absolutely, Li'l J.” Ryan takes him to the door ahead while Wheels disappears behind them.

The door opens. For a moment Jeremy has the dizzying impression that he's looking in a mirror, but he's standing, not sitting. There are no shackles on his wrists. No knife wounds on his arms.

The Fake AH Crew star is not carved into his chest.

“Fuck, you took it like a champ,” Ryan is saying. “For a moment there I wasn't sure you _would_ break.”

Startled out of contemplating his mortality, or apparent lack thereof, Jeremy gives him a sideways look. “I didn't break.”

The Vagabond smiles, humoring him. It sparks a flash of shame in Jeremy's belly. “Sure you didn't, babe.”

**Author's Note:**

> Genesis 2:24.


End file.
